Date:12/08/2003 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2003/08/12/stories/2003081203031300.htm

National

Will a bumper crop save Kishtwar's saffron farmers?

By Praveen Swami

New Delhi Aug. 11. For the first time in four years, Kishtwar's saffron farmers are looking to the future with optimism. If the remnants of the monsoon continues to blow through this remote Himalayan valley for another three weeks, farmers say, this year's saffron harvest could prove to be the best in living memory. But the absence of a transparent marketing structure and the lack of state support for prices means a good saffron crop would not necessarily translate into cash in the farmers' pockets.

Few outside Kishtwar even know the valley is home to a major saffron industry. Unlike their better-known counterparts in the Kashmir valley's Pampore area, the Kishtwar saffron growers do not figure either in the Jammu and Kashmir Government tourism brochures or the minds of the Srinagar-based bureaucrats. Nonetheless, the business has, over the decades, thrived and grown. While Pampore supplies wholesale markets in New Delhi, Kishtwar feeds Punjab's saffron hub, Amritsar.

Official neglect has hit farmers' interests hard. Much of the wholesale trade out of Kishtwar is controlled by three large dealers who, farmers say, function as a price-fixing cartel. Sold at upwards of Rs. 430 for 10 grams in Amritsar, saffron fetches the Kishtwar farmers between Rs. 350 and 400, depending on the quality. Besides, the buyers insist on purchasing in the traditional Tola measures, rather than by the gram. Thus, farmers sell 11.7 grams of saffron for the price of 10 grams, giving dealers another layer of profit.

"No one", complains farmer Hari Lal Sharma, "is in a position to argue, since all the buyers collude with one another." Although the State's Weights and Measures Department long banned the use of the Tola, it has not responded to repeated petitions from the Kishtwar saffron growers asking for enforcement of metric weights. While 1.7 grams may not seem a huge amount, even small quantities of saffron are precious. A kanal of land — 2.5 kanals make an acre — yields only some 300 grams of saffron. Few farmers can boast of more than an acre and a half of land and the yields are highly variable.

Saffron farming is a tough business. Saffron bulbs are planted once every four years. When the bulbs flower, the stamens have to be picked by hand. Every four years, the bulbs have to be removed from the soil, dried, and transplanted to new fields. For the past four years, poor rainfall has led to declining yields and many bulbs have been destroyed by the dryness.

The farmers' hardship was partly mitigated by the fact that uses have been discovered for damaged bulbs and the plant's blue flowers in herbal cosmetic and medicinal products. But producers fear that the benefits of a good rainfall will be undone by the absence of a government-run price support mechanism.

"In the bad years", says Mr. Sharma, "the traders never raised prices, saying there was no demand for saffron in the plains. Now that there is a bumper crop, they are sure to say there is a glut."

State disinterest is tragic since encouraging high-value crops such as saffron could transfigure the fortunes of the economically backward Kishtwar.

The region also produces wild Gucchi, or morels, which retail for over Rs. 1,000 a kg in Jammu markets. State intervention could have helped develop methods to commercially cultivate morels in the region's poorest high-altitude hamlets. Vegetables grown in Doda district, of which Kishtwar is a part, are popular in Jammu markets along with the region's speciality, Rajma beans. Again, the absence of a storage and marketing mechanism has meant farmers rarely get the prices they deserve.